This region is just not known for its flashy exits. And maybe that’s not a bad thing. The story of the Web 2.0 initial public offerings has, for the most part, not been a pretty one for the rest of the country, causing many industry observers to begin designating IPOs as something other than the Holy Grail of exits. That’s reflected in the changing nature of the local IPO scene, from one ambitiously aspiring to Silicon Valley-like activity to a more patient stance, content with fewer, but better-performing public debuts than even the tech world’s biggest brands names have enjoyed of late.

Groupon Inc., which went public last year at an opening price of $20, is now trading in the miserable $3 range. In Facebook Inc.’s bungled IPO, shares opened at $38 and have since fallen to $23 apiece. Smaller IPOs like streaming music service Pandora Media Inc. and social gaming company Zynga Inc. have also fared poorly.

All in all, the flops have been far more common than the winners.

The contrast with the Washington area’s duo of tech initial public offerings in the past year, however, couldn’t be sharper. Take the two most recent — McLean-based marketing software firm Eloqua Inc. and Rockville-based biotech Supernus Pharmaceuticals Inc. Eloqua’s stock price has only climbed since its market debut at $11.50 per share, closing at $18 on Nov. 19. Supernus, which in October won Food and Drug Administration approval for its epilepsy drug Oxtellar XR, is trading at more than twice its $5 IPO price, at around $12.60. Even telecom software company BroadSoft Inc., which went public in 2010, has seen its $9 initial offering price more than triple in the years since.

That said, some of the region’s older IPOs haven’t fared quite as well, begging more caution here when it comes to treading into Wall Street’s territory. The year before BroadSoft, Rosetta Stone Inc. debuted on Wall Street at $18 per share, but is now trading in the low teens, while Sucampo Pharmaceuticals Inc. has seen its $11.50 offering price in 2007 take a dive to the $5 range now.

This slow trickle of initial public offerings — barely a half-dozen tech companies in the past five years — shows no signs of catching up to Silicon Valley. In fact, it’s moving in the opposite direction. The total value of IPOs in the Mid-Atlantic region fell from $1.1 billion in 2009 to $50 million in 2011, which saw only a single public offering, according to a report from law firm Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr LLP. California, by contrast, watched its totals climb over the past three years, both in number of IPOs and their total value. Last year, the state saw 25 market debuts, worth a combined $5 billion.

One reason for D.C.’s scarce IPOs may be the changing concept of the IPO itself. No longer are they seen as cash-out events for founders, as they were in the late-’90s boom, suggested Mark Ellenbogen, who runs the audit practice of BDO USA LLP in Bethesda.

“That doesn’t work today,” Ellenbogen said. “No one is going to let you cash out for an IPO. You are going to have to stick around for a while.”

Therefore, private equity deals, which regularly cash out founders either partially or entirely, become more attractive, he said.

So what does this mean for D.C. tech? It might be easy to overstate the importance, beyond the psychological, of a thriving IPO market. Instead, going public is just not on the near-term radar of the District’s largely early-stage startup scene. Nor should it be, say some tech insiders.

Navroop Mitter, CEO of District-based mobile security startup Gryphn Corp. is among those who care about the broader exit and financing landscape, which is also relatively paltry for D.C. startups, than IPOs.

“I’m not too fixated on the fact that we haven’t had IPOs, but we haven’t had much of everything in between either,” he said.

In particular, he would rather see more acquisitions of intermediate companies, those between early-stage and IPO-ready. That, he believes, would restore more early liquidity for angel investors that could more readily be reinvested into District startups.

“It’s that middle-tier, that medium-range acquisition of scale, that I would love to see more of happening,” Mitter said.